|
The Rus' Khaganate is the name applied by some modern historians to a polity that was postulated to exist during a poorly documented period in the history of Eastern Europe, roughly the late 8th and early-to-mid-9th centuries AD.〔''E.g.,'' Christian, David. ''A History of Russia, Mongolia and Central Asia.'' Blackwell, 1999. p. 38.〕 It was suggested that the Rus' Khaganate was a state, or a cluster of city-states, set up by a people called ''Rus''', who may have been Norsemen, somewhere in what is today European Russia, as a chronological predecessor to the Rurik Dynasty and the Kievan Rus'. The region's population at that time was composed of Baltic, Slavic, Finnic, Turkic, Hungarian, and Norse peoples. The region was also a place of operations for Varangians, eastern Scandinavian adventurers, merchants, and pirates.〔Franklin, Simon and Jonathan Shepard. ''The Emergence of Rus 750–1200.'' London: Longman, 1996. ISBN 0-582-49091-X. pp. 33–36.〕〔Dolukhanov, P.M. ''The Early Slavs: Eastern Europe and the Initial Settlement to Kievan Rus'.'' London: Longman, 1996. p. 187.〕 While there have been several theories, the prevailing opinion today (as of 2013) is that the population centers of the region may have included the proto-towns of Holmgard, Aldeigja, Lyubsha, Alaborg, Sarskoye Gorodishche, and Timerevo. According to sparse contemporaneous sources, the leader or leaders of Rus people at this time were using the Old Turkic title Khagan, hence the suggested name of their organization.〔Duczko, p. 29〕 This period is thought to be the times of the genesis of a distinct Rus' ethnos, which gave rise to Kievan Rus' and later states from which modern Russia, Belarus, and Ukraine evolved.〔〔 ==Documentary evidence== The title of "khagan" for a leader of some groups of Rus' people is mentioned in several historical sources, most of them foreign texts dating from the 9th century, while three East Slavic sources date from the 11th and 12th centuries. The earliest European reference related to the Rus' people ruled by a ''khagan'' comes from the Frankish ''Annals of St. Bertin'', which refer to a group of Norsemen who called themselves ''Rhos'' (''qui se, id est gentem suam, Rhos vocari dicebant'') and visited Constantinople around the year 838.〔Jones 249–250.〕 Fearful of returning home via the steppes, which would leave them vulnerable to attacks by the Magyars, these Rhos travelled through the Frankish Empire accompanied by Greek ambassadors from the Byzantine emperor Theophilus. When questioned by the Frankish Emperor Louis the Pious at Ingelheim, they stated that their leader was known as ''chacanus'' (hypothesized to be either the Latin word for "Khagan" or a deformation of Scandinavian proper name ''Håkan''),〔A minority of scholars believe that the reference was to a king bearing the Old Norse name ''Håkan'' or ''Haakon''. ''See, e.g.'', Garipzanov 8–11.〕 that they lived far to the north, and that they were Swedes (''comperit eos gentis esse sueonum'').〔''Annales Bertiniani, a. 839'', (The Annals of St. Bertin). Ed. Georg Waitz, ''Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Scriptores rerum Germanicarum in usum scholarum.'' Hannoverae, 1883. pp. 19–20; Jones, Gwyn. ''A History of the Vikings.'' 2nd ed. London: Oxford Univ. Press, 1984. pp. 249-50.〕 Thirty years later, in spring 871, the eastern and western emperors, Basil I and Louis II, quarreled over control of Bari, which had been conquered from the Arabs by their joint forces. The Byzantine emperor sent an angry letter to his western counterpart, reprimanding him for usurping the title of emperor. He argued that the Frankish rulers are simple ''reges'', while the imperial title properly applied only to the overlord of the Romans, that is, to Basil himself. He also pointed out that each nation has its own title for the supreme ruler: for instance, the title of ''chaganus'' is used by the overlords of the Avars, Khazars (''Gazari''), and "Northmen" (''Nortmanno''). To that, Louis replied that he was aware only of the Avar khagans, and had never heard of the khagans of the Khazars and Normans.〔''Monumenta Germaniae'' 385–394.〕〔''cagano veram non praelatum Avarum, non Gazanorum aut Nortmannorum nuncipari reperimus.'' Duczko 25.〕 The content of Basil's letter, now lost, is reconstructed from Louis's reply, quoted in full in the ''Salerno Chronicle'', and it indicates that at least one group of Scandinavians had a ruler who called himself "khagan".〔Dolger T. 59, №487.〕 Ahmad ibn Rustah, a 10th-century Muslim geographer from Persia, wrote that the Rus' khagan ("khāqān rus") lived on an island in a lake.〔Brøndsted (1965), pp. 267–268.〕 Constantine Zuckerman comments that Ibn Rustah, using the text of an anonymous account from the 870s, attempted to accurately convey the titles of all rulers described by its author, which makes his evidence all the more precious.〔Zuckerman, "Deux étapes" 96.〕 Ibn Rustah mentions only two khagans in his treatise — those of Khazaria and Rus. A further near-contemporary reference to the Rus' comes from al-Yaqubi, who wrote in 889 or 890 that the Caucasus mountaineers, when besieged by the Arabs in 854, asked for help from the overlords (''sahib'') of al-Rum (Byzantium), Khazaria, and al-Saqaliba (Slavs).〔Laurent and Canard 490.〕 According to Zuckerman, Ibn Khordadbeh and other Arab authors often confused the terms Rus and Saqaliba when describing their raids to the Caspian Sea in the 9th and 10th centuries. ''But n.b.'', Ibn Khordādbeh's ''Book of Roads and Kingdoms'' does not mention the title of Khagan for the ruler of Rus'.〔Duczko 25.〕 ''Hudud al-Alam'', an anonymous Persian geography text written in the late 10th century, refers to the Rus' king as "Khāqān-i Rus".〔Minorsky 159.〕 As the unknown author of ''Hudud al-Alam'' relied on numerous 9th-century sources, including Ibn Khordādbeh, it is possible that his reference to the Rus' Khagan was copied from earlier, pre-Rurikid texts, rather than reflecting contemporary political reality.〔''See, e.g''., Minorsky xvi.〕 Finally, the 11th century Persian geographer Abu Said Gardizi mentioned "khāqān-i rus" in his work ''Zayn al-Akhbār''. Like other Muslim geographers, Gardizi relied on traditions stemming from the 9th century.〔"Rus", ''Encyclopaedia of Islam''.〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Rus' Khaganate」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
|